I'd love to see Free practice on ANY UK channel let alone ITV. Still i can kind of understand why ITV don't show it. I'm pretty sure their TV deal with Bernie only covers Saturday and Sunday. Plus you have the extra cost of commentators, presenter, ITV camera crew, editors, production staff, researchers. Then of course if you put all that cost into a show on ITV4 that not everyone gets couples with the fact that not every F1 fan would want to watch practice sessions anyway. 

So what about a Pay-Per-View service? ITV have exclusive rights to the grand prix in the UK but i'm pretty sure their contract is up in a year or two and bernie is most likely going to raise the prices. So ITV may deem it too expensive (although they get a pretty good return through premium advertising and show sponsorship).

Would you pay to watch each race though? And more to the point would you pay to watch a service that didn't have Martin Brundle commentating? I'm not sure i could. I've watched Grand Prix on TV in America and Japan and whilst it was fun to watch i really missed Martin's commentating. So much so i recorded the races and watched them again when i got home! 

I believe HDTV coverage of some grand prix is going live this year although ITV are the last networkto care about HDTV so don't hold your breath.